Tag Archives: narrative

Art, Porn, and Who It’s Made For:

Guest Writer Elizabeth C. demonstrates how the videogame Ladykiller in a Bind criticizes a pornography industry that fails at consent culture.

~CONTENT WARNING: This article includes topics of porn, misogyny and descriptions of sexual intercourse.~

I was taught my morals in America, and I came away with a few main points. Don’t kill anyone. Don’t steal stuff. Don’t lie. Look both ways when you cross the road. And, finally and most importantly, sex is bad and you should feel bad for thinking about it. America is traditionally highly Puritanical, and as a result there are strong taboos that exist around the subjects of sex and sexuality. Abstinence-only sex education is an excellent of example of this. “Just… don’t.” That’s really the beginning and end of it. At one point in high school my friend’s class was asked to write and perform skits about what one could do instead of having sex, such as genealogy and baking. It was pretty dire.

Identifying the differences between stories that build up and stories that burst brightly

I have an issue with some stories that I don’t have with others, even when the pieces of media are relatively similar in aesthetic or narrative scope. I wondered about it on and off for years, trying to figure out the “X factor” that switched the paths in my brain between “I’m thoroughly engaged in this” and “I can’t figure out if I’m only watching this ironically now”. And while my analysis is far from complete, I feel confident enough in my results to write this post, which I’m hoping will be the first in a series of thoughtpieces on this topic.